JCC Posters and Abstracts 2024

Welcome to the submission page for virtual poster presentations! This platform serves as a space to showcase your research to both local peers and our sister institutions.

As part of this virtual event, we encourage participants to submit a brief abstract (one paragraph summary) of their poster presentation along with the virtual copy of their poster. Please submit poster in .jpeg format to applegaj@oregonstate.edu before May 13, 2024.

Whether your submission is digital or physical, please ensure that all posters are formatted to be printed on a board a standard of 42″ x 36″ and no larger than 48″ x 48″. Include your name, school, program, and any other relevant affiliations visibly on the board.

Poster presentations offer an excellent opportunity to visually guide viewers through the basics of your research while engaging in detailed explanations and discussions.

For further inquiries or detailed guidelines, please feel free to reach out to us at esgp@oregonstate.edu. We look forward to receiving your submissions!!

See Your Poster Submissions Below!

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Overproduction in the fast fashion industry is increasingly being met with scrutiny due to its harmful environmental and social impacts globally. As the fast fashion business model of take-make-waste continues to prove itself insufficient, the circular economic business model persists as a widely adoptable sustainable business model alternative. Keeping resources in circulation for as long as possible through reuse, repair and regeneration prolongs usage and reduces further extraction. The demand for transparency and accountability in the fashion industry continues to build, and brands are finding themselves confronted with the need to adapt to new legislation domestically and abroad to employ sufficient long-term strategies, especially in response to new Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) policy in the EU and in California. By following the proposed Responsible Textile Recovery Act – California (SB) 707 (Newman) bill that focuses on implementing a new textile recycling and repair program to the state, this project aims to better understand the effects this new ‘first of its kind’ EPR bill would have on affecting change to the fashion and textile industries. Will textile recycling be a capable mechanism for coping with the accelerating cycle demands of the fast fashion system? What challenges and opportunities are anticipated in implementing better circularity practices, such as textile-to-textile recycling? By interviewing stakeholders in apparel, textile recycling, bill legislation and advocacy, the project will communicate various impacts of fast fashion and imposed legislation in a multimedia exhibit sharing interviews,  various graphics, and data interpretation- both found and produced through a life cycle assessment (LCA). Through extended support to infrastructure from responsible producers, this new EPR funding could increase state capacity for dealing with textile waste, diverting millions of tons from landfills and setting new norms in coping with our textile waste problem.

Ashley Kemper
University of Oregon
Environmental Studies

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Riparian restoration projects with plantings of trees and shrubs may increase carbon sequestration and mitigate climate change, but predicting the success of restoration plantings is difficult. In Oregon, over 2000 riparian restoration projects have included planting trees and woody shrubs since 1995. Measuring the outcomes of these projects can improve strategies for successful future plantings. Soil texture is an essential component of plant growth that is often overlooked in analyses of riparian plantings, despite its importance for nutrient and carbon retention, water holding capacity, aeration, and drainage. We hypothesize that a combination of age, soil properties, and climate can be used to predict vegetation cover and biomass from riparian plantings. Hemispherical photography below the canopy allows us to assess the growth of plantings across variable conditions, with an empirical, local approach. To understand restoration trajectories, we measured the Leaf Area Index (LAI) at 18 planting sites in western Oregon which ranged in age, levels of water stress, and soil texture. Soil textures ranged from 20-85% silt, 10-70% sand, and 7-45% clay, measured with an adapted pipette method. Water stress, based on the median climate water deficit (CWD), was classified as low water stress (<225 mm CWD) and high water stress (>225 mm CWD). Sites were planted between 5 and 27 years ago with mixed Oregon native trees and shrubs, providing an opportunity to assess the effect of species composition on LAI. During the summer of 2023, 18 sites were sampled, and 25 additional sites will be sampled in the summer of 2024. Three points were randomly selected at each site and images were taken at two lens heights of 0.7 and 1.24 meters. An image was also taken adjacent to each point along the edge of the streambank at these heights, leaving us with 4 images per plot, and 12 per site. Images were edited to ensure strong contrast between sky and vegetation pixels in Adobe Photoshop and analyzed in Gap Light Analyzer (GLA) to find the percentage of vegetation to sky pixels. LAI values were compared against their soil textures by age and water stress using an ANOVA test—the LAI of planted riparian ecosystems in this dataset ranges from 0.1 to 3.17, and old-growth forests can reach a maximum from 5 to 8. By quantifying the successes of past riparian restoration projects, we can understand ways to maximize projects conducted in the future.

Holly Amer (she/hers)
Graduate Student
Soil Plant Atmosphere Lab
University of Oregon

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Nearly all federal funding, and much private funding, awarded to research and community programs requires budgeting for program evaluators to assess activities, characteristics, and outcomes of the program. However, standard program evaluation practices are often criticized by program operators and participants for their lack of attention to community needs and values. Many communities, especially in the Arctic, are feeling overwhelmed with “research fatigue” and exhausted by researchers who do not prioritize community ways of knowing and being, frustrations which can be perpetuated and enhanced by harmful evaluations. This project aims to conduct a community-centered evaluation in collaboration with the Alaska Resilience Farms (ARF) partnership, an educational food security partnership connecting urban and rural communities in Alaska. The evaluation and evaluators will be positioned within the program, rather outside the program, which will enhance the relationships and trust ARF has built with communities across the state and allow the evaluation framework to be used continuously as the program grows, rather than viewed as a singular, one-time activity. The evaluator and program operators will work collaboratively to develop an evaluation framework grounded in the partnership’s values and center the four R’s of decolonizing teaching practices – Respect, Relevance, Reciprocity, and Responsibility. This project will support the ongoing efforts of the ARF partnership and contribute to conversations around the need for community-led evaluation practices, using a food security partnership in Alaska as a case study.

Sijo Smith
University of Oregon

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Title: Investigating the Effects of Mycorrhizal Inoculation on Native-Invasive Plant Interactions Post-Fire

Landscapes across the Pacific Northwest are experiencing increasingly frequent and intense wildfires. Altered fire regimes drive changes in the composition of critical plant-soil mutualists such as mycorrhizal fungi. Mycorrhizae form mutualisms with plants that improve fitness, drive community succession, and potentially inhibit invasive species establishment. However, mycorrhizal communities are prone to alteration once invasive species establish- preventing reestablishment of native species post-fire. Inoculation of native mycorrhizal fungi in post-fire landscapes may have significant restoration implications for mitigating invasive species spread and advancing native community succession; however few studies have examined this. In 2023, the Lookout Fire burned through the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest in western Oregon, which is mostly comprised of old-growth Douglas-fir/Hemlock forest. Here I propose two experiments surrounding the Lookout Fire to assess whether mycorrhizal inoculation positively influences the competitive ability (H1) and community resistance (H2) of native plants against an invasive grass- false brome (Brachypodium sylvaticum). To assess my first hypothesis, I will conduct a greenhouse competition experiment growing native species with false brome under inoculated and non-inoculated conditions using soil from the Lookout Fire. To assess my second hypothesis, I will seed native species across burn severities in the H.J. Andrews- comparing the density of invasive species among inoculated and non-inoculated groups after one growing season. Should both hypotheses be supported, my preliminary data will show inoculated groups improve competitively against, and experience lower densities of, false brome. These experiments have significant management implications regarding mitigation of invasive species spread in a fire-dominated future.

Ethan D. Torres
University of Oregon

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Water Quality and WASH in Focus: Greywater Monitoring in Transitional Housing
Communities in Eugene, Environmental and Social Outcomes.

There has been a need to push for sustainable solutions to water management. Water management strategies such as Greywater recycling serve as a tool to help tackle the increased demand on water
resources due to rising populations, industrialization, etc. Greywater is wastewater that is devoid of fecal coliforms or matter. Greywater refers to wastewater from baths, sinks, washing machines, kitchen
sinks, etc. Lane County, Oregon is characterized by very high rates of homelessness per capita in the United States. Unhoused communities and communities post-disaster often do not have access to safe
water and sanitation services. Greywater recycling can assist unhoused communities and other communities post-disaster to have a reliable water reuse system, especially for non-potable uses.

Greywater systems result in less extraction of water from streams and rivers and minimize the quantity of wastewater that passes through sewer or septic systems improving environmental outcomes. The
IDEXX Colilert will be used to test for microbiological presence such as Escherichia coli in greywater.

E – E-coli can serve as an indicator organism for water quality and fecal matter presence. Results are usually available after 24 hours. Greywater recycling and monitoring can lead to improved environmental and social outcomes thus enhancing the quality of life of communities by cutting costs and providing a strong and safe water management strategy. Greywater recycling is a sustainable and feasible alternative for the future most importantly those regions that are laden with water scarcity,
unhoused populations, and for disaster management.

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This thesis will take a blue humanities approach to considering the intersecting lives of freshwater and saltwater by examining the narrative lives of harmful algal blooms (HABs) and nearshore seaweeds. It will focus on estuary, wetland, nearshore, and bay regions as sites of encounter between freshwater and marine epistemologies to examine algae’s role as an indicator or storyteller about water quality. 

Where HABs and the clarity with which they indicate imbalance played a significant role in the decision to remove the Klamath dams led by Karuk, Hoopa, Yurok, Klamath Tribes and activists, another algae event, the decline of bull kelp along the Pacific coast, is a quiet yet revealing story of slippage and tension between the anthropocene oceans, multispecies assemblages and the blue economy paraigm. The project will connect these two algae case studies–HABs in the Klamath Basin and/or Bay Delta region and the decline of bull kelp–through narrative analysis and legal geography methodologies. This thesis will foreground the role of colonial ecological violence in scaffolding California’s water history and subsequent regulatory regimes and waterscapes. Ultimately, it seeks to unsettle the perceived permanence of water infrastructure by drawing attention to water justice movements as sites of decolonial and environmental justice struggles and to highlight creative praxis in peripheral ecologies between infrastructure, water, and law.


Lydia Lapporte
University of Oregon